This resolution, as articulated in the handout that you have before you, calls for the elimination of the SAT as a requirement for admission to Pitzer College.  This proposal is not motivated by a lack of confidence in our admissions office at Pitzer, but by a willingness to enter into, indeed, to lead the ongoing debate on this question in American higher education.

The SAT projects and reflects race, class and sex biases.  As a standardized test, it produces unequal results to the extent that students have had unequal educational experiences.  These structured inequalities in educational opportunity are tied to race and class, and to a lesser extent sex, so that the use of the SAT as some sort of “objective criterion” for making admissions decisions inevitably perpetuates the same inequalities that produced the group differences in SAT scores in the first place.

And this is why the ban of the SAT is important at Pitzer College.  As long as we require the SAT, as we do, we are telling students who did not take the SAT that they are ineligible.  And because there are large and persistent racial differences in who has and who does not have SAT scores, our SAT requirement has an adverse racial impact:  more persons of color are deemed ineligible to apply to Pitzer than non-persons of color, on the basis of SAT scores alone.  And because there are large and persistent group differences in performance on the SAT, our requirement of the SAT has more of a discouraging effect on members of groups with lower average scores.

These instances of adverse racial impact are unavoidable, and there is nothing that our very fine admissions office can do to side-step this discrimination as long as we require the SAT as part of the admissions process.  Pitzer’s non-discrimination policy, and Pitzer’s ethos and mission of promoting intercultural understanding and the socially responsible use of knowledge, mandates that we vote, today, to drop the SAT as a criterion for admission to Pitzer College.

The most difficult thing confronting this proposal is the strong opposition that it has encountered from our Director of Admissions.  So to be clear, this proposal is not an indictment of our very fine Admissions Office, or of its director or its staff.  But we must understand that it is in the lifeblood of admissions professionals to value the SAT as a “tool” worthy of consideration.  Of the 2,500 colleges and universities that we might compare ourselves to, we would be the first to take this bold step to drop the SAT entirely from the admissions process.  This means two things, one that we could really make a name for ourselves by taking this principled action; and two, it is not surprising that admissions professions trained in the American tradition of testing would adhere so strongly to the SAT, and find themselves at sea at the thought of doing away with the SAT.

As we examine the use of the SAT at Pitzer College, we find that it is, in fact, a problem.  The tenacious embrace of the SAT by the Director of Admissions is proportionate to the extent to which the SAT is relied upon to make admissions decisions.  If a students’ application is incomplete because of the lack of SAT scores, it is not read, so in this sense the SAT can be seen as a prime mover in the admissions process.

The use of the SAT at Pitzer, and any other college, is also flawed by the accepted presumption that the SAT measures something worthy of serious consideration.  So, if students are otherwise more or less equal, the student with a 1200 SAT might be viewed as more worthy of admission than a student with a 900 or 1000 SAT.  But we all know that SAT preparation courses can boost one’s SAT by 200 or more points (I know of one student who recently told me that his scores went from 790 to 1190 with coaching), and therefore our use of the SAT in the decision making process is flawed because the scores can be manipulated by experience or money, and therefore our decisions based on such scores only privilege privilege.

Even worse, our Admissions Director has established an SAT floor above which a student must score in order to be considered for our merit scholarships, the Trustee Scholarships.  These are the scholarships that amount to a $40,000 cost reduction of a Pitzer education.  $40,000.00.  That floor is so high that only 17% of White students meet or surpass it.  The minimum SAT that students must have in order to be considered for the $40,000 scholarship is so high that only 1% of Mexican Americans, only 1% of African Americans, and only 1% of Native Americans have any realistic chance of even being considered for such a scholarship.  These requirements produce an adverse racial impact, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of institutional racism.

So as we abandon the SAT as a criterion for admissions, or for merit-based scholarships, we will have to re-school, and re-tool, our admissions staff to discover other indices of merit that are not so subject to the vagaries of race, sex or class privileges.

When we wring our hands in dismay, “How will we admit people without the SAT?” we confess to our reliance on this flawed tool that impels us to mediocre homogeneity.  So as we courageously embrace this proposal to drop the SAT, we recognize the need to re-school and re-tool our admissions process to operate in a fashion that is more blind to the unearned privileges that are tied to race, sex and class.

If we decide to continue our use of the SAT, we forsake our mission and ethos of intercultural understanding.  Our continued embrace of the SAT is an embrace of being immersed in the throng of schools that are blind to the SAT’s irrelevancies and biases.  If we continue the use of this flawed tool of admissions, we remain mired in the second tier of private liberal arts colleges--unknown, unheard, and unimportant.  If we continue to require the SAT, then our ideals of diversity, equal opportunity, intercultural understanding, and social responsibility, are a sham!  A farce!  Nothing more than a set of hypocritical oaths.

But instead of succumbing to this “conformity to hypocrisy,” we can vote Yes!

We can vote Yes! to dropping the SAT as a criterion for admission.

We can vote Yes! To a Pitzer College whose deeds are consistent with its creeds.

We can vote Yes! To a Pitzer College that takes a leadership position on this important and on-going national debate.

We can vote Yes! To a Pitzer College that models social responsibility.

We can vote Yes! To a Pitzer College that is unafraid to tell its stories of excllence, without relying on the highly suspect SATs.

We can vote Yes! To a Pitzer College that is known and respected for taking a principled stand on one of the foremost moral questions facing American higher education today.

We can vote Yes! To a new and more diverse future for this college.

We can vote Yes! To a college that practices what it preaches.

We can vote Yes!  We can vote Yes!  We can vote Yes!

After a lengthy discussion, the College Council neared the point where it could vote on the proposed resolution.  A motion was made to “postpone” the vote indefinitely, and that motion passed.  Pitzer College succumbed to a cowardly form of voting against the resolution, by voting “not to vote.”